Our house has gardens backing onto some other houses. One of these houses is owned by a housing association. The garden has an odd shape. It is 'T' shaped, with a very elongated top bar of the T. Our garden meets the T at the outer part of the top line of the T. At this point the strip is only a couple of feet wide.
This strip has been planted with Leylandii, which have now grown into a hedge about 20m high. They have never been maintained in all the time we have lived here (8 yrs).
We are building a garden room, and need to remove some of the overhanging branches. They are MASSIVE, over a foot thick in places and will cost alot to cut and remove.
I know the law is that we can offer any branches back, but we cant really do this. The garden strip is so narrow, there is no where to put the branches and we don't meet the garden proper of the house with the trees in, only this very narrow strip.
To make matters more complicated the house has an elderly tenant in.
Could we bill the HA for the tree work we need to do? We have been in discussions with them about the trees, but they change their mind every few days on whether they are responsible or not, and we need to get on.